We’re living in a time of endless information, data thrown at us constantly, a relentless barrage. And that torrent of facts has produced little wisdom. In fact, we could argue that the short snippets of knowledge are antithetical to wisdom. We see images and videos and text, and ever more rarely do we step back to fit it all into context. More often we slot new information into our existing paradigms. But then – on rare occasions – something so powerful comes along that it shakes us, rattles us out of our sorting and slotting habits and into a new vision.

Day after day for the past six months we have been shaken. We have borne witness to genocide and, for so many of us, tried to halt it. In return, we have received revelation after revelation. We have seen the naked truth laid bare, the truth about how many of the powerful will circle the wagons to defend the war machine and enable genocide. The prayer in Ephesians for “a Spirit of wisdom and revelation,” and for our hearts to be enlightened, must mean seeing clearly the horrors of the world. Only in doing so, and through doing so, can we see the glory. There is no darkness without light, there is no day without night. This is, in part, my understanding of the Jesus story. His glory and resurrection would be nothing without his suffering, and death.

Ephiseans talks about Jesus, saying, “the hope that belongs to his call” and the hope is everything. “It is the fullness of the one who fills all things in every way.” And how are we to understand that? How can we, in our smallness, understand that totality? First, we must grapple with pain. First, we must have clear eyes. We must see, and accept, the reality of war and slaughter and devastation. Without one, the other is hollow. Without an honest recognition of the state of the world our hope in its resurrection, in its rise to a better plane, is just lipstick on a pig. It’s just a thin coating of shallow optimism over a grim reality.

But, if we are okay with being shaken, if we are okay with beginning at the revelation that there is suffering, that there is pain and even genocide, what then can we aspire to? We can aspire to some hope in this age and the next. Theologian Monica Coleman calls this “Making a way out of no way.” When all seems hopeless, lost, impossible, we can still carve a way forward. And in acknowledging how difficult things are, how difficult this world is, we finally have a choice. When we pretend things are easy, what choice are we really making? We are choosing illusion. But when we come to accept the difficulty of reality for what it is, faith becomes a real and powerful choice, a choice to believe in the possibility of resurrection, of change. 

Coleman writes in her book Making a Way Out of No Way, “[Survival as a creative quality] has been metaphorically referred to as the power of ‘making a way out of nothing’s in the work of womanist ethicist Katie Cannon and ‘making a way out of no way’ in the work of Delores Williams.” Faith, then, helps us build survival. It is a tool, but one of our most powerful tools. So too is prayer. It is us asking, taking action, participating in faith and making it real in this world, rather than just a vague idea we hold in our heads or hearts.

Faith, revelation, hope can all seem hollow. But I am struck, again and again, as I see videos from Gaza, from the West Bank, from Palestinians elsewhere – there is always faith. There is prayer and hope and more specifically a certainty that they will return to their homes. That there will be justice. From the very depth of hardship there is a sureness that the world will be made right. I see resistance, I see a people making a way out of no way, and I see survival. This, perhaps, is the revelation.

The exercise I have to offer you is what I would call the “hope is a discipline” exercise, going off the notion from organizer Mariame Kaba that hope is something we do daily, not just a feeling we either have or don’t have. Mariame and Kelley Hayes write about this in their recent book Let This Radicalize You: Organizing and the Revolution of Reciprocal Care. In their writing, they talk about first feeling grief, something we are too often told to shy away from. Particularly when it comes to collective events or politicized events, like the pandemic or Israel’s genocide in Gaza, our lives and our society rarely contain spaces for collective grief.

So to begin, you can allow yourself to experience grief over that which impacts us collectively. We can do this as individuals, or even better we can create these spaces with the groups we organize with. We can plan events, usually for groups that know each other well already, to be open about grief or mourning or sadness. This takes trust, and might not be for everyone, but there’s a tremendous potential for relief, and for building trust even further as we go through these moments together. Then, later on, we can intentionally build hope together. For some it might be the same event, with hope following grief together. For others it might be more spaced out and we might need time. But together we can build the discipline of hope.

One group of people that embody this practice of communal grief in a difficult, yet immensely inspiring way, have been students organizing for Palestine across the country. If you see an encampment, you’ll often see posters or signs that center around mourning in some way. These students are collectively and publicly grieving the lives that have been so brutally taken in Gaza. The names of the slain are often listed and placed in a position of respect. Teach-ins honor the dead, and at the same time express a fierce determination to fight for the living. Even more so, the actions of these students collectively display determination to fight for the living, and for a world where life is sacred.

Ultimately, the idea that hope is a discipline tells us to take action that embodies hope. I may feel optimism as I sit one day, observing people who inspire me, but that is different from hope. To have hope, in this way of thinking, is less important than living out hope. This approach turns hope into something we do rather than something we ‘have.’ It helps us make a way out of no way. And few people have embodied this approach more than the students who struggle so bravely for a Free Palestine and a freer world.